Quackin Grass Nursery

With rises up and downhill declivities, bends this way and curves that a long, very long driveway leading to a potential new residence became a stone snake, a snake leading me to a potential destiny. On my left is an old, historic stone wall, aged and weather worn, its crest now uneven as rounded stones, mini-boulders the size of bowling balls through many decades rolled from its top; one here, slipped; a couple farther down, tumbled. Who or what felled them will never be known, a deer jumping the wall, one of its rear cloven hooves perhaps scraping it with enough force to dislodge it into a drop? Or maybe a young, rebellious farm boy with bruised resentment grown from an angry disagreement with Pa pushing one, cold to the fingers’ touch, into a free fall? Through strings of many years, one decade layered on top of the next and the next forming a jeweled necklace of time two hundred years and a few more decades old, so much history and colorful detail in lives as rich and meaningful as ours but lost in personal lore never known, merely surmised. As I continue to drive down and away from the road another thought forms, “This wall never was a polished formal wall.” The vision emerges of farmers, colonists, new New World recent residents picking, pulling up and hauling away large stones and piling them into walls. Thus, enclosed pastures for their milk cows and beef were built; fewer hazards and more growing area in a field with the treacherous rock removed. The walls would helpfully keep the beasts contained. These walls are utilitarian. Never polished nor perfectly flat-topped their beauty is accidental. Their rustic charm a gateway to a history shrouded in mists. (ABOUT US continued on subpage)